12/17/06
David Friedman speaks of dishonest words
in his current entry on Ideas, his blog. He mentions the word statism
as often dishonestly used by libertarians.
My problem with the word as most often used by libertarians is not that it is used dishonestly, but incompetently. Statism does not mean believing in the state
or even supporting the state.
It means supporting a large and intrusive state that plans the economic activities of huge chunks of people. Or, as Merriam-Webster has it, concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often extending to government ownership of industry.
This is descriptive. The word implies nothing about the reasons for supporting a large and intrusive state. It merely says that a large, activist state is good. A statist society is one with a Leviathan state acting to control vast sectors of the economy.
It is an open question, a matter of nuance in definition, the extent to which present-day America is statist.
But libertarians often misuse the word -- a technical term with a clear and distinct meaning in the writings of Ludwig von Mises, for instance -- as support for any state,
of all things. R.W. Bradford, late publisher of Liberty, did this all the time, in private conversation, anyway. He frankly (and inaccurately) called himself a statist, since he supported a minimal state. That is, he was not an anarchist.
This was very aggravating. Thankfully, I think I kept this Brafordianism out of print as long as I helped edit the magazine.
Others use statism as the worship of the state
! Egads. Well, that's a bit better.
But that's not how Mises used the term, and we might as well have another term to mean state worship. I propose: state-worship!
Comments:
No Comments for this post yet...
Leave a comment:
Pingbacks:
No Pingbacks for this post yet...
RSS Feed